It's funny how people always say that there are five stages of grief. How each person's grief affects them differently. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, where it's all supposed lead to, acceptance. Acknowledging that losing someone important will all be alright in the end, with time. Time heals all wounds people would say. How, after an undetermined amount of time, life would make someone feel better. It's as if to say that's nature's way of telling someone they're able to move on and let the past stay in the past. It's a joke. That's all grief really is. Life taking a child away from their parents and then expecting them to accept the fact he's gone forever. There was just no crueler a joke than that. It's a punchline that no one else in Gotham City would ever get.
It's been months, Martha. He's gone. You have to accept that.
The last stage of grief was always an expectation for people to reach. How sickening the world must be to say that's the norm as determined by society. To expect someone to go on with life as if no tragedy had ever struck. Denial wasn't an option and seemed even more ludicrous. When the sound of a gunshot would haunt a mother's dream, a bedroom that once held the sounds of life were now empty, living in denial would be an insult to one's memory. It was an option that Martha could never take. Bruce deserved better than to be forgotten. Anger was reasonable, yes. Martha felt anger. Hatred, even, towards one man. A man who in his own stages of grief couldn't grasp how much she was hurting. Working away as a doctor or running a casino when their son was dead.
I miss Bruce.
Bargaining was a common occurrence in her life after losing her son, Bruce. His small frame bleeding out in the cold, a young boy who had so many years left to live. Night after night, she would wish it would have been her, or her husband Thomas, that died. Anyone, but her kindhearted, eight year old son, Bruce. She missed him with every breath she took. Ached to hold him in her arms once more. Wealth meant nothing when she couldn't see his blue eyes, which were too much like his father's, light up with gifts she would shower upon him, spoiling him as he had deserved to be. Singing him lullabies when he was sick. Watching him play with his friends and dressing him for school. All the things she would give up just for him to be alive once more.
And I miss him too, along with your smile.
Martha knew that was the moment she hated the man she had married. Where there was once so much love and admiration, bitter resentment had grown. She despised his every breath that he took. How dare he? What gave him the right to even say that? Martha could have forgiven him for his long nights of drinking to forget their loss. Maybe she could have even found it in herself to pretend that they would be alright one day. There's was so much warmth in his voice when he told her he wanted to see her smile and it made her nauseous. She realized, then, that he was taking every heartache and pain she felt as one sick joke. Taking for granted all the times they had for Bruce by not being as torn asunder as she was. Thomas, expecting her to smile, when all she wanted was to waste away into nothingness. It was disgusting of him and she hated it. If he wanted to see her smile, then she would give him a smile.
Martha, he's dead.
Depression was pointless to her. No matter how much sorrow she had felt, none would do a thing to bring Bruce back in her life. Thomas had honestly believed that killing the man who stole their son from them would make the excruciating pain she felt dissipate. As if the gloomy sky of Gotham City would suddenly become all rainbows and sunshine. Didn't he understand that nothing he did could make her happy anymore? Didn't he contemplate for one moment that living a life without Bruce was far too much to bear? No. Thomas just didn't grasp reality, but she did and so she had no choice to show him.
I understand Thomas. See? I'm smiling.
Her once doting husband recoiled from her when he had gotten exactly what he had wanted. Blue eyes, which their son inherited, widened in aghast with what she had done for him. Shouldn't that have made him thrilled? Thomas had wanted her to smile. Now, Martha would always be smiling. A permanent smile carved in her face as a reminder for what he told her he longed to see again. She wondered if Bruce would be thrilled to see his grief stricken mother smile once more.
Martha Wayne no longer took any solace in her namesake that opened the many doors in the socialite life she had once knew. She wasn't the same woman who could charm guests at a charity event with her soft voice and pleasant mannerisms. Expensive jewelry she once wore had no place with a straight jacket. Where Martha had once lived in a Manor surrounded by anything her heart desired, she now had residency in a padded cell with walls to white that made her eyes hurt. A woman of the higher class that did her damnedest to make this city a better place to live now only had drugs pumping through her system to keep her incoherent. As the psychiatrist strapped her down to the gurney to administer electric shock therapy intended to placate the violent urges Martha was feeling, she could only think on the man who had put her there.
Thomas had promised her during wedding vows to always protect her, and he had failed both her and their son completely. When he couldn't be bothered with a woman, who he believed had gone insane, and the divorce papers were filed, she knew there was nothing left of the woman she once was. The person who had been a mother was now as dead as her son. Martha Wayne was no longer a name for someone who, in their grief, took a knife to their face. Only one name suited her now and with how sick of a joke everyone's existence was she embraced her new identity without a second thought – the Joker – which was a name that resonated with every fiber of her being. An identity that ever since Bruce died she was fated to take on.
Mass murder became as effortless to her as the parties she once hosted. Having others feel the same agonizing trauma she had felt brought maniacal laughter when tears once shed. Parents who didn't deserve their children, when she couldn't have her own, suffered the same fate by her blades. As the Joker, Martha finally was able to grieve in the way that she was truly meant to. It was liberating from the nights she spent crying herself to sleep, hugging her son's clothes in her arms. There was one person that she wanted to inflict the most damage she could upon. Hurting her ex-husband, as he had hurt her, became the only reason for her to continue living. His failures had brought on a new existence for her life after all. As much as the Joker deeply missed her deceased son, she was thankful he wasn't around to see what his parents had become in his absence. She couldn't imagine how Bruce would feel about her now.
Joker's once darling husband had become a monster of his own. A Bat of the night that would seek vengeance on all he deemed fit. That only made her blood boil when he would arrive and act as if he held the moral high ground between them. Hypocrisy, as he condemned her coping skills, when he would murder with the same brutality as she herself did. She taught him a lesson when she crippled his ally Selina Kyle. Murdering children only made him even more persistent in his tirade of how Joker needed help. Telling her that she was the one insane when he was dressed up as a Bat. Patronizing her when he was no different and the worse of the two. They both lost the same son and both decided to grieve in their own ways. Thomas had brought this on himself. Joker shouldn't have been told to smile years ago and if she ever got the chance she'd give him a Glasgow grin of his own.
Batman's hypocrisy went to maddening degrees for her as he implemented the same weapon that had took their sons life into his arsenal of choice. Joker had perpetuated many atrocities as she grieved, but never once did she resort to killing someone with a gun like her ex-husband did. Him doing so was distasteful to their sons memory, that was something the Joker just couldn't stand by and allow to continue. Going out of her way to make sure he knew that what he was doing was a futile effort. Everything about the man she knew as Thomas made her sick. How she would do anything to see his life drain from those same blue eyes as she once witnessed her son's death.
Joker detested Batman, fighting against everything he stood for night after night. Every waking moment fantasizing of how she would finally be rid of her last painful reminder of a life that was no longer her's to live. What made everything about their relationship worse was how he refused to kill her himself. Allowing her to continue living the way she did when he held no qualms of killing others. Hurting her more and more inside each time they encountered each other. Each time leaving her to keep on remembering their son. Death would have been a sweet relief instead of the nightmare she was forced into. Thomas would never allow her to experience that and it only made her hate him more.
Thomas must have despised her as much as she did for him. There was just no other explanation she could comprehend. Reasoning with herself in attempt to shield her unstable mind from the truth. For there were times when the weight of all they had been through together would break through the walls in their hearts to keep out the overbearing guilt for still being alive. In those moments green eyes would shed tears that she thought could no longer be shed and with that they would embrace each other. Be a support for each other and whispers of promises that could never be fulfilled. Kisses and declarations that love still existed between them when that would truly mean that they were both insane were shared between them when the world wasn't around to listen. Only then could they allow themselves to relive a life that should have never been taken from them.
Not every time, when they embraced the lives they once had, would be of admiration and tenderness. Curses would be thrown at each other's direction as kisses would become bites that would tear through skin. A purple suit that would be torn to shreds and scattered on the floor to be put on later in regret. Claw marks that would rend muscled skin as reminders of how their passion was just a lie. Bruises on thin wrists that when apologized for after would be mocked. Joker felt true self-loathing when what should be fights to the death would leave messy dyed green hair and sweat covered bodies pressed together. Moans that had no business being heard would come freely. When it would be over, and they couldn't look at each other, no words would be spoken. Both of them knowing that there was no point in pretending anymore. Thomas would leave and Martha would fume in unbridled rage. For the Joker knew she hated him and yet she loved him. Hating herself for loving to hate him.
Love and hate were as difficult to separate from each other as was the codependency she shared with the man she was once married to. Joker could murder as many people until her heart contends and in the end she would always come back into the Bat's arms. Weeping tears and craving tender caresses. She would contemplate with herself if, at any given time, she could honestly kill Batman, if living her life without the crutch he had become during her weakness. Only when she would feel that she still loved him would she force herself to visit Crime Alley. Relieving that night in her mind over and over again until the only escape was insanity that would prevent her from breaking apart. Violence that she could inflict instead of being inflicted on her.
Thomas Wayne knew that he should have been a better man. Perhaps if he had been, then he would have never lost his son. Drinking away the self-loathing, in his manor, that once held joy and laughter, now only left in disarray, driving away every good thing in his life as he was left to attempt to pick up the pieces. He was once a man who had everything. He had a beautiful, loving wife that he would work tirelessly for just to make her smile. He had a son who he had wanted to teach the ways of the world and see him become the man he was meant to be. Now, his son laid rotting in the ground. Everything had become a loss to him. Good times had become bitter memories. None of this was supposed to happen. His life shouldn't had fallen apart around him.
Years ago, he tried to accept the fact that their son was dead and he couldn't save him. It was a hard pill it had been to swallow when he was in the business of saving lives. A doctor that couldn't even keep his son alive was no doctor at all. He tried to keep things together and be strong for his wife, whose depression would leave her looking out the window, day in and day out. Buying her presents in the hopes it might brighten her day just even for a fleeting moment would be just enough for him. It never came, at least not in the way he would have preferred. Thomas had missed her smile that had won his heart over in his youth. Whatever she asked of him, he would have given it to her without complaint.
Murdering Joe Chill, his son's killer, with his bare hands should have been the closure that they desperately needed; an action that could have them move forward and start anew. Even if they could never get over Bruce's death, maybe they could have at least been somewhat content. Martha should have been able to take solace with the death of their son's killer. When crimson stained his hands, never to be fully washed clean of his deed, and knuckles dripped blood, any normal man would have been horrified at what they had done. Normal was an impossibility with Bruce's death. All he could think about was how relived Martha would be feeling as he had felt. They could move away from the city and never look back. There was a chance for healing. Alas, that was a hope that died when his once beautiful wife carved a smile in her face, destroying any chance of moving past the tragedy that had befallen their family.
Sending her away to get the help she needed shattered everything inside him. What choice did he have, though? She was mentally unstable and as a doctor he just couldn't stand to see her that way. Unfortunately, that had only made their situation ten times worse, as she had grown to despise him and there was just no helping her recover from the trauma. Every visit he had with her, she would violently attack him. Each time he had to see the orderlies restrain her against her will and stab a sedative into her skin, his heart would become hardened. Supporting her and telling her that he wanted to one day bring her home never helped. Love did nothing to curb her worsening mental state. Visits that had been three times a week had lessen to once a month and finally he just couldn't bring himself to see her at all. When he had divorced her, it was for him to try and move past the pain. Martha, as her new persona, had awoken a deeper rage within him and in doing so forced him to change himself as well.
Joker had become his responsibility and only he could put a stop to the chaos she was burdening Gotham with. As Thomas Wayne wasn't capable of taking the action that needed to be done, he trained himself to be something more than just a man. He became a terror in the night who would kill, without mercy, those who wished to hurt the innocent. Batman had every intention of enacting vengeance upon the woman he once had been married to for the deaths of countless children she caused, but when he saw her again, he just couldn't bring himself to kill her. Joker was the only one who could ever receive his mercy.
Martha had become deranged and blood thirsty, but all he wanted to do was save her from the madness that she'd become consumed by. He could take the lives of others with no hesitation, yet each time her green eyes would look at him with deep rooted hatred, he knew that deep down inside he loved her. He only hated what she became in her grief, knowing the woman he once spent so many wonderful memories with, could still reside somewhere hidden away in the lunatic she became. Every time he would put effort in offering her the rehabilitation she could have, Joker would only recoil from Batman farther. He never let that fully perturb him from his one true mission of bringing Martha back to him.
Thomas felt that if he ever gave up on his estranged ex-wife, his mission in life would be for naught. Getting rid of criminals was a pointless endeavor if he couldn't one day rehabilitate the woman. She was the worst nightmare Gotham had ever seen. How could he ever forgive himself if he stood idly by and let Martha destroy herself further? It wasn't in his nature to allow things to continue as they were when it came down to the Joker. It was most likely naive for him to fight so hard to save her, but he just couldn't stop himself. Everyone he knew told him that he should just end her life and be done with it, but that was one action he just wouldn't be able to walk away from. No one could understand how much she would forever mean to him or how much he fought to make things right when they went so wrong with his family. He had lost Bruce. He couldn't permanently loss Martha, as well.
Batman hated how she would target children more than anything. To him it was horrendous that she would gleefully inflict the pain they had suffered on innocent people. Each time a child died by her hand, all he wanted to do was end her life. Perhaps he was as cruel as the Joker claimed he was for allowing her to live despite the lives that decision would cost. As Batman, he would always go to any lengths of stopping her but made his one rule be that her life would never be taken by his hands. If not for the love that also borderlines on loathing he felt for her then for the fact that she was the mother of his only son. If Bruce was still alive then how could he ever approve of his father murdering his mother no matter how depraved she had become. That is what stopped his from crossing that one line with the Joker, each and every time.
When Selina was shot and her children murdered in front of her eyes, Batman had sworn to himself that would be the last chance he'd ever give the Joker. When he had finally caught up to her however, disgusted with himself, they became intimate for the first time since their son had died. Regretful as that action was it didn't prevent them from doing so again and again in the future. A constant reminder that broke his heart and he'd burry in denial that they still could love each other after all the abhorrent actions they inflicted on each other. Only they understood each other when the world around them could never fathom what they went through. Consoling each other through the grief when the next time they encountered each other would only shatter them even more. As unhealthy a cycle it had become, it was the only thing that kept them going when everything else wanted to suffocate them. Thomas with his desire for vengeance for the wrongs in his life and Martha falling deeper in the pools of insanity to avoid the loss. Neither ever allowed themselves to lean into acceptance.
The Joker perhaps only gave those precious moments to him as punishment for allowing their son to die. For when they ended, Thomas could only feel sorrow and regret. Joker would laugh with tears streaming down her checks and he knew he couldn't comfort her. He couldn't take her pain away no matter how much he wished he could. What words could he say to a mother who loses her son? When she'd curse the day she ever met him, his heart would clench and he'd leave her alone when he should be doing everything in his power to help her. Every time he left his mind would reprimanded him for doing so. Telling him how could he claim to be fond of her when he would abandon her in times of need?
Those nights where they weren't hating each other's existence, he would tell her how much he still loved her, how much he wished that he could have prevented all of this from happening, telling her how much he understood her reasoning for becoming the monster that she was, apologizing for all the pain he had caused her and would continue to do so in the future. He wanted to tell her that she was still beautiful despite the scars that reminded him of his failures. He wanted her to hear his endearing words as they have always should have been.
Rarely, only rarely, would she confide in him how much she still loved him. How she wanted the life back that once meant so much to them both. A lie that was comforting, but would always be a misrepresentation of their relationship. What they truly were was two damaged people living in the past. It wasn't fair that this was what had become of them, but there was nothing that could change that.
As the world was on the brink of destruction, and his apathetic view point of the world was ever present, that's when a spark of hope had arrived in the name of Barry Allen. For Barry had told him of a better world, a place that seemed too absurd to believe, and yet he could only hold onto one part of that made all the grief he had suffered seem insignificant. A history so vastly different from the one he had known. Bruce was alive in this other man's timeline and this world should have never existed. With that knowledge came at a cost. For if that world was to return then, Thomas and Martha would be the ones that would have died that night instead of Bruce. It was a sacrifice that Thomas couldn't make on his own. Martha, who had become the plague of Gotham as the Joker, the woman who despised everything about him and the only woman he could ever love had the right to make this decision for them…